This children's film featured Zinovy ​​Gerdt as "The Professor" (a narrator stand-in for Tolkien), Mikhail Danilov as Bilbo, Anatoly Ravikovich as Thorin, Ivan Krasko as Gandalf and Igor Dmitriev as Gollum. Smaug and the Spiders were portrayed by puppets. Missing in this version are the Trolls, Elrond, Beorn and the Wood-elves. The Goblins are human-like with little makeup and portrayed by dancers from the Leningrad State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre (as were the inhabitants of Lake Town).

The film was shot in 1984 as a teleplay and produced in the framework of the children's TV series Tale after Tale (Russian: Сказка за сказкой) aired on the Leningrad TV Channel in the 1980s and the 1990s.